Eleven weeks
in a ship thirty-seven feet long by eleven wide, carrying a crew of nine
as well as twenty passengers. Lurching and lunging and tossing on the
Atlantic swells, the sails creaking night and day, spread above them like
some evil bird of prey. Hovering, waiting for death.

The dung
buckets on the open deck were screened only by a scanty calico curtain
that blew aside more often than it stayed in place. For Sally Turner the
dung buckets were the worst.

She was
twenty-three years old -- small, with dark hair, bright brown eyes, and
a narrow, pinched face -- from a Rotterdam slum by way of a rodent-infested
corner of a Kentish barn. The crossing had turned her insides to water.
She went seven or eight times a day to the dung buckets. The flimsy cloth
almost always blew aside and she saw the grizzled, hungry-eyed crewmen
watching, waiting for her to lift her skirts. As if all the battles between
Kent and now had been for nothing.

Her brother
suffered more from the seasickness. Lucas Turner was a big man, like his
sister only in his dark coloring, and in the intelligence that showed
behind his eyes. Until now most would have called him handsome; the journey
had reduced him to a shell. From the start Lucas hung day and night over
the side of the wooden ship, vomiting his guts into the sea.

The voyage
was beyond imagination, beyond bearing. Except that there was no choice
but to bear it. One small consolation: the April day when the Princess
left Rotterdam was exceptionally warm. A premature summer rushed toward
them as they sailed west. Most of the food spoiled before the end of the
first three weeks. Constant illness prevented hunger.

A crossing
longer and more miserable and more dangerous than anything they had talked
about or prepared for, and when they got there -- what? By all reports
bitter cold in winter and fierce heat in summer. "And savages," Sally
Turner said the first morning of June, when they were nine weeks into
the voyage, and she and her brother were hanging on to the rail in the
ship's bow. The swells were stronger in that position, but Lucas was convinced
he could be no worse. And there was a bit of privacy. "There are red men
in America, Lucas. With painted faces and feathers and hatchets. In God's
name, what have we done?"

Lucas didn't
answer. They had decided the risk was worth the taking while they were
still in Holland. Besides, he had to lean over the rail and puke yet again.
There was nothing in his stomach to come up, even the bile was gone, but
the dry heaves would not leave him.

For as long
as Sally could remember, it was Lucas who made such security as there
was in her world. She felt every shudder of his agony-racked frame as
if it were her own. She slid down, using the wooden ship's planked bulkhead
to keep her steady, and pawed through her basket. Eventually she drew
herself up and pulled the tiny cork of a small pewter vial. "Chamomile
powder, Lucas. Let me shake some onto your tongue."

"No, that's
all you've left. I won't take it."

"I've more.
With our things down below."

"You're
lying, Sal. I can always -- " He had to stop to heave again.

His sister
leaned toward him with the remedy that promised relief. Lucas eyed the
small tube with longing. "You're sure you've more?"

"In our
box in the hold. I swear it."

Lucas opened
his mouth. Sally emptied the last few grains of the chamomile powder onto
his tongue. It gave him some fifteen minutes of freedom from nausea.

Below decks,
in the sturdy box that held all their belongings carefully wrapped in
oilskin, she did indeed have more chamomile, but only in the form of seed.
Waiting, like Lucas and Sally Turner, to be planted in Nieuw Amsterdam
and thrive in the virgin earth of the island of Manhattan.

*

There was
a wooden wharf of sorts, but two ships were already moored alongside it.
The Princess dropped anchor some fifty yards away, and a raft carried
them to shore. It wasn't big enough to take everyone in one trip. Lucas
and Sally were dispatched on the third.

They clung
together to keep from being pitched overboard, and listened in disbelief
to one of the crewmen talk about the calm of the deep, still harbor. "Not
too many places on this coast you can raft folks to land like this. But
here the bay's flat as a lake when the tide's with you." Meanwhile it
seemed to Lucas and Sally that they were sliding and rolling with each
wave, unable to lift their heads and see what they'd come to after their
eleven weeks in hell.

At last,
land beneath their feet and they could barely stand on it. They'd experienced
the same misery three years before, after the far shorter crossing between
England and the Netherlands. "Give it a little time, Sal," her brother
said. "We'll be fine."

Sally looked
at what she could see of the place. A piece of crumbling earthworks that
was a corner of Fort Amsterdam. A windmill that wasn't turning because
there was no breath of air. A gibbet from which was suspended a corpse,
covered in pitch and buzzing with flies. And the sun beating down on them.
Relentless. "Lucas," she whispered. "Dear God, Lucas." Her brother put
a hand on her arm.

"You there,"
a voice shouted. "Mijnheer Turner. When you get your legs under you, come
over here."

"There's
some shade over by that tree," Lucas murmured. "Wait there. I'll deal
with this."

A couple
of rough planks had been spread across two trestles made from saplings.
The man seated behind this makeshift table was checking off names on a
list. Lucas staggered toward him. The clerk didn't look up. "Turner?"

"Aye. Lucas
Turner. And Sally Turner."

"English?"

His accent
always gave him away. "Yes, but we're come under the auspices of..."

"Patroon
Van Renselaar. I know. You're assigned to plot number twenty-nine. It's
due north of here. Follow the Brede Wegh behind the fort to Wall Street.
Take you some ten minutes to walk the length of the town, then you leave
by the second gate in the wall. The path begins straightaway on the other
side. You'll know your place when you get to it. There are three pine
trees one right behind the other, all marked with whiting."

Lucas bent
forward, trying to see the papers in front of the Dutchman. "Is that a
map of our land?"

"It's a
map of all the Van Renselaar land. Your piece is included."

Lucas stretched
out his hand. The clerk snatched the papers away. At last, mildly surprised,
he looked up. "Can you read, Englishman?"

"Yes. And
I'd like to see your map. Only for a moment."

The man
looked doubtful. "Why? What will it tell you?"

Lucas was
conscious of his clothes hanging loose from his wasted frame, and his
face almost covered by weeks of unkempt beard. "For one thing, a look
at your map might give me some idea of the distance we must go before
we reach those three pine trees."

"No need
for that. I'll tell you. Half a day's walk once you're recovered from
the journey." The clerk glanced toward Sally. "Could take a bit longer
for a woman. Some of the hills are fairly steep."

This time
when Lucas leaned forward the map wasn't snatched away. He saw one firm
line that appeared to divide the town from the countryside, doubtless
the wall the clerk had spoken of, and just beyond it what appeared to
be a small settlement of sorts. "Our land" -- Lucas pointed to the settlement
beyond the wall -- "is it in that part there?"

"No, that's
the Voorstadt, the out-city, a warehouse and the farms that serve the
town." The clerk seemed amused by the newcomer's curiosity. He placed
a stubby finger on an irregular circle a fair distance beyond the Voorstadt.
"And that's the Collect Pond as gives us fresh water to brew beer with.
Anything else you'd care to know, Englishman? Shall I arrange a tour?"

"I was promised
land in the town," Lucas said. "But I'll take a place in this Voorstadt.
I'm a barber. I can't earn my keep if -- "

"Your land's
where I said it was. You're a farmer now. That's what's needed here."

"Wait."
The voice, a woman's, was imperious. "I wish to speak with this man."
A slight figure stepped away from the knot of people standing a little
distance from the clerk. Despite the heat she was entirely covered by
a hooded cloak of the tightly woven gray stuff the Dutch called duffel.
She freed a slender arm long enough to point to Lucas. "Send him to me."

"Ja, mevrouw,
of course." The clerk jerked his head in the woman's direction. "Do as
she says," he muttered quietly in the Englishman's direction. "Whatever
she says."

Lucas took
a step toward the woman. He removed his black, broad-brimmed hat and held
it in front of him, bobbed his head, and waited.

Her hair
was dark, shot with gray and drawn back in a strict bun. Her features
were sharp, and when she spoke her lips barely moved, as if afraid they
might forget themselves and smile. "I heard you tell the clerk you could
read. And that you're a barber."

"Both are
true, mevrouw."

"Were you
then the surgeon on that excuse for a ship?" She nodded toward the Princess
riding at anchor in the harbor. "God help all who cross in her."

"No, mevrouw,
I was not."

"A point
in your favor. We are cursed with so-called ship's surgeons in this colony.
Ignorant butchers, all of them. You're English, but you speak Dutch. And
that miserable craft sailed from Rotterdam, not London. So are you a member
of the English Barbers' Company?"

"I am, mevrouw.
But I've lived two years in Rotterdam, and I was told I'd be allowed to
practice here exactly as..."

"I have
no reason to think otherwise. And if you know your trade -- " She broke
off, chewing on her thin lower lip, studying him. Lucas waited. A number
of silent seconds went by; then the woman pointed toward Sally. "I take
it that's your wife."

The woman's
eyes betrayed a flicker of amusement. "The juffrouw does not seem
particularly obedient, Lucas Turner. Is your sister devoted to you?"

"I believe
she is, mevrouw."

"Good. I,
too, have a brother to whom I am utterly devoted. I am Anna Stuyvesant.
My brother is Peter Stuyvesant. He is governor of Nieuw Netherlands. And
right now..."

Sweet Jesus
Christ. Bloody Stuyvesant and his bloody sister. When the only thing Lucas
wanted, the thing that had made him come to this godforsaken colony at
the end of the world, was to be where the authorities would leave him
in peace.

Either his
reaction didn't show, or she chose not to notice it. "Right now my brother
is in need of a man of great skill. And I am trying to decide, Lucas Turner,
if you might be he."

He had no
choice but to seize the moment. "That depends on the nature of the skill
your brother requires, mevrouw. I know my trade, if that's what you're
asking."

"It is part
of the question. The other part is the precise nature of your trade. Is
it true that, though they belong to the same Company, London barbers and
surgeons do not practice the same art?"

Lucas heard
Sally's sharply indrawn breath. "Officially yes, mevrouw. But the two
apprenticeships occur side by side, in the same hall. A man interested
in both skills cannot help but learn both. I am skilled in surgery as
well as barbering. What is it the governor requires?"

The woman's
eyes flicked toward Sally for a moment, as if she, too, had noted the
gasp. A second only; then she dismissed the younger woman as of no importance.
"I believe my brother to be in desperate need of a stone cutter, barber."

Lucas smiled.

Finally,
for the first time in weeks, he felt no doubt. "Pray God you are correct,
mevrouw. If it's an expert stone cutter your brother needs, he is a fortunate
man. He has found one." Lucas turned to Sally. She was white-faced. He
pretended not to notice. "Come, Sal. Bring my instruments. I've a patient
waiting for relief."

*

Word was
that Peter Stuyvesant ruled with absolute authority and that any who questioned
him paid a heavy price. Right then, ashen, sweating with pain, the man
lying in the bed looked small and insignificant.

Lucas put
his hand on Stuyvesant's forehead. The flesh was cold and clammy. "Where
does it hurt, mijnheer?"

Anna Stuyvesant
was in the room with them, huddling in the gloom beside the door. Some
mention had been made of a wife, and when they arrived Lucas had heard
the voices of children, but none had appeared. He'd seen only a black
serving woman -- from what he'd heard of this place she was probably a
slave -- and the man in the bed. And, in control of all, the sister. Obviously
married, or had been, since the clerk at the dock had called her mevrouw,
but one who, following the Dutch fashion, hadn't taken her husband's name.
Looked like the type who wouldn't take willingly to his cock, either.
Lucas was conscious of her fierce glance drilling a hole in his back.

He leaned
closer to the patient, observing the clouded eyes, the pallor, the sour
breath that came hard through a half-open mouth. "Judging from the look
of you, mijnheer, Mevrouw Stuyvesant may be right. And if she is, if it's
a stone, I can help you. But..." He hesitated. Afterward, some men thought
of the relief, and were grateful. Others remembered only the agony of
the surgery, and those hated you forever. God help him and Sally both
if the governor of Nieuw Netherland hated him forever.

"But what?"
Stuyvesant demanded.

"But it
will hurt while I do it," Lucas said, choosing not to dip the truth in
honey. "Worse than the pain you're feeling right now. After the operation
is over, however, you will be cured."

"If I live,
you mean."

"The chances
are excellent that you will, mijnheer."

"But not
certain."

"In this
world, Mijnheer Governor, nothing is certain. As I'm sure you know. But
I've done this surgery dozens of times."

"And all
your patients lived?" Wincing with pain while he spoke. Having to force
the words between clenched teeth.

"Perhaps
six or seven did not, mijnheer. But they were men of weak constitution
before the stone began plaguing them."

Stuyvesant
studied the Englishman, even managed a small smile. "I am not a man of
weak constitution. And you, you're a strange one, barber. Despite your
mangled Dutch, you speak like a man with his wits in place. But the way
you look, not to mention how you smell...Ach, but then my sister tells
me you only just got off the Princess, so per -- "

The pain
must have been savage. The Dutchman gritted his teeth so hard Lucas thought
he might break his jaw. The sweat poured off him.

Lucas leaned
forward and wiped the governor's face with a corner of the bedding. Half
a minute, maybe less. The wave of agony abated. Stuyvesant drew a few
deep breaths. "This operation..." He whispered the words, his strength
sapped by the pain. "How long will it take?"

Stuyvesant
flung back the covers. "Took them forty-five minutes to do this." His
right leg had been cut off at the knee.

Lucas looked
down at the stump, then at the face of the man in the bed. Pain had hollowed
his cheeks, but when their eyes met Stuyvesant did not look away. Finally
Lucas nodded. He turned to the woman beside the door. "Bring some rum,
mevrouw. He must drink as much as we can get down him."

Anna Stuyvesant
stepped out of the shadows. "There is no rum in this house."

"Then send
someone to get some. Your brother cannot -- "

"Yes, I
can." Stuyvesant's voice, sounding firmer than it had, trembling less
with agony. "I must. I take no drink stronger than ordinary ale."

"But under
the circumstances..." Lucas looked again at the stump of leg.

"Not then,
either," Stuyvesant said quietly. "I fear the Lord more than I fear pain,
barber."

"As you
wish. But perhaps I can satisfy both masters. If you will excuse me for
a moment..."

Lucas stepped
into the narrow hall. Sally was there, sitting at the top of the stairs,
clutching her basket and the small leather box that contained his instruments.
She jumped up, pressing her bundles to her, her narrow face shriveled
with anxiety. "How is he? Can you help him without cutting?"

"No." Lucas
was sweating. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his black jacket.
The accumulated filth of the journey left a dark mark. "God help me, I
must remove the stone."

"But --
"

"There is
no 'but.' If it doesn't come out, like as not he'll drown in his own piss."

"What if
he dies of the pain of surgery? What if he bleeds to death?" Her voice
was an urgent whisper.

"This man
can bear suffering." Lucas looked anxiously toward the bedroom door. "He's
had one leg cut off at the knee, and he doesn't take more than an ale
to quench his thirst. No strong spirits, not even to dull the onslaught
of the knife and the saw. As for bleeding to death, I must see that he
does not. Say your prayers, girl, and give me my instruments."

"Lucas,
if anything happens, what -- "

"Nothing
is going to happen. Except that mijnheer the governor will think I'm the
greatest surgeon since Galen."

"But you're
a barber, Lucas. In heaven's name, your surgeon's instruments are what
got us hounded out of London in the first place."

"I know.
But we're in Nieuw Amsterdam, not London. We must take our chance when
it presents itself. See if you've any stanching powder in your basket."

Sally hesitated.

"Do it,
Sal. Otherwise I'll go ahead without it."

A few seconds
more. Finally she began pawing through her things. "Yes, here it is."
She held up a small pottery crock. "Stanching powder. A fair supply."

"Excellent.
Now some laudanum."

Sally shook
her head. "I have none. I swear it, Lucas. I only brought a little aboard,
and we used -- "

"Damnation!
Look well, Sal. If any's left, I can use it to advantage."

After a
few moments groping, she produced a tiny pewter vial of the kind she'd
used to store the last of the chamomile powder. "This held laudanum. But
it's empty."

Lucas snatched
the container, uncorked it, sniffed, squinted to peer inside. "A drop,
perhaps. It will be better than nothing. Aye, I can see a drop or two
at the bottom." He recorked the vial and slipped it into the side pocket
of his breeches, then turned back to the bedroom. "Wish me luck, Sal.
And stop up your ears. But don't worry, the shouts won't go on for long."

*

Sally went
again to sit on the top step, clutching her basket in her lap, as if her
simples were the only thing she had to remind her of who she was and how
she came to be in this place.

The house
at the corner of the fort built for the governor of Nieuw Netherland was
nothing like as grand as places she'd seen from afar in London and Rotterdam,
but it was the grandest she'd ever been inside. Two stories, and both
of them for the living of this one man and his family and his servants.
Brick outside and polished wood within. Even the wooden steps were buffed
to such a gloss that when she leaned forward she could see her reflection,
her face peeking over the toes of her scuffed boots.

Lucas had
bought her the boots before they left Holland; he said clogs wouldn't
do for such a long and perilous journey. The boots had pointed toes and
laced to well above her ankles. She'd thought them incredibly grand at
first, but less so now. And the sturdy Dutch folk in gilt frames looking
down at her from the walls seemed unimpressed. God knew, they were not
the first.

Back in
Kent, in the barn behind their father's Dover taproom, the eleven Turner
brats had slept tumbled together in the straw because all the beds were
rented for a penny a night to travelers. There Lucas had protected her
from the despicable things that befell their sisters and brothers (often
with their father's connivance). There Sally believed in Lucas's quest
to be better than he'd been born to be. When he taught first himself to
read, then taught her, she believed. When he wrangled a barbering apprenticeship
to the Company of Barbers and Surgeons by showing a member of the gentry
the sketch Sally had made of the men, bare arse in the air, rutting with
a boy of six beside the stable (and never mind that the child was a Turner),
Sally believed. When Lucas sent for her to come to London to join him,
and two years later the wrath of the Surgeons drove them both into the
street, his sister believed in the rightness of her brother's aspirations.
Now, when they had come so far to this strange place, and he was yet again
rushing headlong into conflict with authority; now, she was less sure.

*

Lucas returned
to Stuyvesant's bedroom. His patient lay silent in his bed, rigid with
pain. The governor's sister was leaning over him, bathing his face with
a cloth dipped in scented water. Lucas leaned toward her. "Send word to
the barracks that we'll need three strong men," he said softly. "Make
sure they're young, with -- "

"No." Stuyvesant's
word was a command. "I'll not be held down."

"I didn't
intend for you to overhear me, mijnheer. But I don't mean you to be held
down, only held in position. It is through no lack of courage that a man
twitches under the knife."

"I will
not twitch, barber."

"Mijnheer
-- "

"Get on
with it, man. Else I'll have you hanged as a charlatan who offers hope
when there is none."

Lucas hesitated,
looked at Anna Stuyvesant. She shook her head. Lucas took the pewter vial
from his pocket. "Very well. Please open your mouth."

"I told
you, I don't take strong drink."

"This isn't
drink. It's a medicinal draught made by my sister." Stuyvesant still looked
wary. "Consider the size of it, mijnheer." Lucas held the tiny pewter
tube in front of the other man's eyes. "Could this hold enough rum or
geneva to satisfy even an infant's thirst?"

The governor
hesitated a second longer, then opened his mouth. Lucas shook the single
remaining drop of laudanum onto his tongue. The argument had been pointless;
there wasn't enough of Sally's decoction to do any good. On the other
hand, sometimes what a patient believed to be true was as good as the
reality.

"That will
make things very much easier," Lucas said. He even managed to sound as
if he meant it. "Now, mijnheer, in a moment we must get you out of your
bed and over to that chest by the window where the light's best. I'll
want you to lean on the chest, support yourself on your elbows. But first"
-- he turned to Anna Stuyvesant -- "bring me a bucket, mevrouw. And some
cloths. And a kettle of boiling water."

She left.
Lucas checked the contents of his surgeon's case. A dozen ties made of
sheep's intestines. Three scalpels of different sizes, a couple of saws,
a needle threaded with catgut, and, for stone cutting, a fluted probe
and a pair of pincers with a jointed handle that could be opened to the
width of four spread fingers.

The sound
of flies buzzing in the sun beyond the window was the only noise. The
man in the bed gritted his teeth against the agony and said nothing, just
kept looking at Lucas. Lucas looked back. Finally Anna Stuyvesant returned.
"Hot water, you said, and clean cloths and a bucket. It's all here."

"Thank you."
Lucas stood up and removed his jacket. He began rolling up the sleeves
of his shirt. "Now, mijnheer, may I assist you from the bed?"

"Yes, but
first...Anna, go. Leave us alone."

"I do not
like to go, Peter. If you should -- "

"This is
nothing for a woman to see. Go." And after she had gone, "Very well, barber,
let's get this over with. If you hand me my stick I can -- " Stuyvesant
broke off, gritted his teeth against another wave of the pain. "Do it,"
he whispered finally. "I don't care how much it hurts or for how long.
For the love of God, man, do it now."

He helped
Stuyvesant hobble to the chest beside the window. The governor leaned
forward, taking his weight on his elbows as Lucas directed. In fact Lucas
would have preferred that his patient stand on the chest and squat, but
a man with one leg couldn't be asked to assume such a position. Bent over
like this was the next best thing. Lucas pushed up the governor's nightshirt,
exposed the Dutchman's plump buttocks, then, a moment before he began,
"There is one thing, Mijnheer Governor."

"What one
thing, barber?"

"My fee."

"Are you
mad? I'll have you horsewhipped. Of course your fee will be paid. What
do you take me for?"

"It is.
I take it you mean to ask for something other than money." The words came
hard, with wheezing breath, limned by pain. "Ask then. Quickly."

"A homestead
closer to the town than the one my sister and I have been assigned. And
a place inside the town to practice my trade."

Stuyvesant
turned his head, looked at Lucas over his shoulder. "There is no place
inside the town. In Nieuw Amsterdam the one thing even I can't control
is the roofs over people's heads. Fifteen hundred souls between the wharf
and the wall, and all of them building where they...For the love of the
Almighty, barber, this is an odd sort of conversation to be having with
a man when your arse is in his face."

"I do not
need much space to practice my craft, mijnheer, a small room will do."
Lucas still hadn't touched his instruments.

"But I tell
you...Very well. We'll find a corner for you. Now -- "

"And a different
piece of land for my sister and myself. As I said, it need not be inside
the town, only close to it. In the Voorstadt, perhaps."

Stuyvesant
looked into Lucas's eyes for a second more. "Get on with it," he said
finally. "You'll have what you ask. A barber shop this side of the wall
and a homestead in the Voorstadt. But only if I live to issue the orders."

"I expected
you'd see that part of it, mijnheer." Lucas pushed his rolled sleeves
further up his arm. "This is only the examining part of the surgery. The
forty-five seconds doesn't start until I'm done."

He inserted
his finger deep into Stuyvesant's rectum. The governor grunted, but he
didn't move. The soft wall of the intestine yielded to probing. Lucas
could feel the bladder, and when he pressed a little harder, the stone.
"Ah, a pebble of some size, Governor. No wonder it's causing such trouble."
Stuyvesant's only answer was his labored breathing. "Now, mijnheer, the
forty-five seconds begins. You may start counting."

Lucas yanked
the bucket into position below his patient's dangling genitals. He withdrew
his finger from the governor's body and took up his scalpel. One quick
cut between testes and rectum. Two inches long. Deft and swift, with his
arm wrapped around the man's waist to hold him in position. Stuyvesant's
body jerked once, but in a second he was again rigid, and he made no sound
except for a soft groan.

Blood was
obliterating the cut. Lucas grabbed the pincers and inserted them into
the wound. One quick snap and the handle opened wide, spreading the flesh
apart. He could see the wall of the bladder. He chose another scalpel,
smaller than the first, made another quick cut. Less than half an inch,
but the sharp reek of urine told him he'd opened the right place. And
through it all, Peter Stuyvesant neither moaned nor twitched.

Piss gushed
into the leather bucket. And a second later, clearly, a sound that could
not be mistaken in the silence broken only by his patient's wheezing breath,
the ping made by the stone as it fell. Thanks be to God, he wouldn't have
to probe for it.

Lucas had
three ligatures ready, thin strands of sheep's intestine. He tied off
the blood vessels and mopped the wound with the cloths Anna Stuyvesant
had given him. A slow but steady flow of blood was oozing from some vessel
he'd cut but couldn't see. There was nothing for it but to lengthen the
original opening and tie off the vessel. A lesson he'd learned from bitter
experience. Fail to do that and no matter how tightly and neatly you sewed
together the flesh, the patient died.

Thirty-five
seconds were gone. If he was to live up to his boast he must begin to
stitch, but he dared not.

He reached
for the smaller scalpel, made the wound half an inch longer at each end.
There, the source of the blood was near the top of the cut, close to the
kidneys. Lucas grabbed the vessel with his probe, pulled it forward, and
tied it off. Forty-two seconds. And not a sound or a movement from the
man who was bent over the chest. If anything, the silence was deeper than
it had been.

Lucas felt
a moment of triumph. He and Sally -- finally, fate was smiling on them.
"Just checking on you, mijnheer, almost finished." He sponged the wound
with hot water, sprinkled on some of Sally's stanching powder. Finally
he released the spring on the handles of the pincers, removed the instrument
and tossed it aside, then grabbed the needle threaded with a thin strip
of sheep's intestines and began to stitch.

"Done,"
he said a few seconds later. "It's over, Governor. The stone is out. Such
pain as you'll have for the next few days is from the wound, and when
it heals you'll be cured. Meanwhile you must have a bran and salt enema
every day. There is to be no straining at stool."

Lucas helped
his patient back to bed while he spoke, supporting the other man with
an arm around his waist. "I'll call your sister, shall I," he said when
the governor was back in bed and the covers were drawn up over him. "Perhaps
you'll sip some ale to restore your -- "

"Fifty-two
seconds," Stuyvesant said. "I counted." There was a thin line of blood
along the margin of his lower lip. And tooth marks. He'd bitten through
his own flesh rather than cry out. "It took you fifty-two seconds, barber,
not forty-five."

Lucas nodded.
"You had a high bleeder. I had to make a second cut to find it. If I had
not, Governor, though I sewed you well up, you would bleed inside your
body and be dead before morning."

For a moment
he thought Stuyvesant might denounce him as not the stone expert he claimed
to be. Instead, "Go down to the waterside. Tell Heini the clerk I said
to let you sleep inside the fort tonight, in the storehouse. And that
he should come see me in the morning. Tell him I mean to change your land
appropriation."

II

It turned
out the pitch-blackened corpse hanging near the dock was a kind of scarecrow,
a warning to potential wrongdoers, but there were plenty of tall trees
in the colony and no lack of real hangings. Inside the fort there was
a stockade open to all weather that served as the town jail, and two whipping
posts.

Nieuw Amsterdam
was not, however, as desolate and forbidding as Lucas and Sally imagined
at first sight. Apart from the crumbling earthworks of the fort -- forever
in need of repair -- and the macabre display at the waterfront, there
was much to please the eye.

Thirty-five
years had passed since Peter Minuit bargained with the local tribes for
the island. Now the compact settlement occupied about a third of the narrow
southern tip of Manhattan, running a scant half-mile from the fort to
the wall and sheltered by the hilly, thickly wooded landscape of the rest.
To be sure, Nieuw Amsterdam's streets were crooked and narrow, created
by simply widening the footpaths of the red men, and it was not long since
the settlers were living in pits roofed with reeds, but by 1661 proper
houses had been erected. Stuyvesant and his council, the burgomasters
and schepens, had outlawed thatched roofs because of the fire hazard they
presented, and had begun importing enough glazed yellow bricks to allow
the wealthier residents to duplicate the sturdy, cheerful dwellings of
Holland.

To Lucas's
eye, even the simpler wooden houses built of local materials were unmistakably
Dutch. Most were small two-story structures with steeply pitched roofs
and dormered windows, nestled side by side and built gable end to the
road so there might be more of them in a row. The Netherlanders had long
considered it a sign of affluence to live in a populous city.

Doubtless
thoughts of home also inspired the tidal canal that had been dug from
the beginning of the curve of the eastern shore northwest for some eight
hundred of a tall man's strides. When it froze the locals used it for
skating. Those who had neglected to bring their blades to the New World
strapped beef shinbones to their shoes instead.

The rest
of the year the canal made it possible for cargo ships to offload directly
into the warehouses of the richest merchants. They were the ones who built
their substantial yellow brick residences along the canal's banks, and
found space for a garden in front of each house. There were gardens as
well in front of the brick homes on the street called Pearl that ran beside
the waterfront (almost the first thing the Dutch did when they arrived
was to pave the river road with shells from the nearby oyster beds) and
still more gardens adjoining the prosperous dwellings lining both sides
of the Brede Wegh.

If Lucas
put his back to the sea and stood on a high point such as the middle of
the three bridges crossing the canal, his strongest impression was of
a neat little town hugging the tip of the island, protected by the mountainous
and wooded terrain to the north. It was "a brave and a pretty place,"
as the pamphlet encouraging immigration had put it. What the view from
the bridge concealed was the rowdy and raucous life that made this town
unlike any other in the New World.

Boston and
Providence and the rest had all been founded in pursuit of some high ideal
of philosophy or religion, and were occupied by English folk of like mind.
Nieuw Amsterdam was created by rich Dutchmen who wanted to become richer.
Any who could further that aim were welcome. On a given day you might
hear eighteen different languages at the intersection of the Brede Wegh
and Wall Street.

Lucas did
not find here the huddled poor who were such a fixture in Dover and London
and Rotterdam. There appeared to be money to be made in every lane and
at every crossing. All you needed was an eye for a trade. And courage.
And, of course, luck and a strong stomach.

In New England
a shared theology created order. In the seething mix of nationalities,
beliefs, and nonbeliefs that the Dutch West India Company had created
in Nieuw Amsterdam, not even an iron fist like Stuyvesant's could alter
the fact that the making of a quick fortune was a disorderly and a boisterous
affair. Once they had money, men -- particularly the trappers and traders
and sailors who crowded the town's narrow streets -- craved pleasure.
A good number of the upstanding Dutch burghers liked something on the
side as well.

Whores were
tolerated as long as they kept themselves to Princes Street and did not
mingle with the good Netherlander huisvrouwen. There were twenty-one
taverns, taprooms, and alehouses in the little town. The mix pleased Lucas:
fucking and boozing led to arguments and mayhem. A man of his skills was
bound to be kept occupied.

Stuyvesant
had assigned him a tiny shop built against the easternmost end of the
wooden palisade that gave Wall Street its name. Lucas's place was really
a lean-to, no more than five long strides in each direction. There was
no window, only a fireplace against the back wall, and across from it
a door split horizontally in the Dutch fashion. "The wily bastard just
barely managed to keep his promise," Lucas told Sally. "It's almost inside
the town." Nonetheless, a steady stream of customers found him from the
first day he banged the striped red-and-white pole into the summer-parched
earth outside the door.

A good many
came to be bled, often for the aftermath of drink. Lucas was not entirely
sure that opening a blood vessel in the temple of the sufferer, or even
setting the leeches to him, really would relieve the nausea and the pounding
headache, but it could do no harm.

Large quantities
of rum and geneva could also be counted on to result in broken bones that
needed to be set. Lucas built a sturdy wooden frame to assist him in carefully
aligning fractured arms and legs before forcing them back into position.
The ship's surgeons who were his only competition in the colony -- mostly
men who stayed a short time, then got restless and went again to sea --
set bones by brute force, using as many vicious yanks as the patient could
endure. The pain was equally intense using Lucas's frame, but the results
were far more satisfactory. He put the apparatus to use three or four
times a week.

Also thanks
to drunkenness, he was twice asked to trepan a man's skull. Desperate
huisvrouwen hoped that boring a couple of holes in a husband's
head might rid him of his craving for alcohol. Lucas knew that was unlikely,
but he had recently made himself a new drill and was interested in refining
his trepanning techniques. Those two operations were among the most interesting
he performed during his first few months in Nieuw Amsterdam. They occupied
a page each in his journal.

From the
day he set up shop, Lucas made copious notes about every procedure, even
ordinary barbering -- delousing and shaving and bleeding and lancing boils
-- but he took special pains to write in detail about the more intricate
surgeries, cutting away fistulas and tumors and removing stones. He did
a great deal of the latter. Since the operation on Stuyvesant he'd become
famous for it. Sufferers made the journey to his little room beside the
wall from remote farms on the long island and Staten Island. Some arrived
from as far north as Nieuw Haarlem. One came from a large holding, a bouwerie,
in Yonkers.

At first
it was Lucas's speed that mattered. He knew it didn't hurt his reputation
when he had whoever accompanied the patient stand on one side of the room
and count the seconds between the initial cut and the last stitch. But
in the autumn, after Sally's first crop of poppies bloomed, Lucas was
best known for the fact that he could, with a few spoonfuls of one of
his sister's decoctions, make the patient so groggy and fill his head
with such soporific dreams that he felt considerably less pain.

As in the
case of the barber shop, Stuyvesant had almost kept his word about their
land assignment. The Turner homestead was small, what the Dutch called
a plantage rather than a bouwerie, and it was beyond the
Voorstadt, nearly a mile from the town, not far from the Collect Pond.
But it took them twenty minutes to walk to Wall Street, not half a day.
And, after a lifetime of being misfits and almost three years of wandering,
here in the wilderness of Manhattan Lucas and Sally had a place of their
own.

They planted
before they built, and all that first summer they slept rough with a musket
between them, though so far the natives they'd seen weren't hostile. "A
little sullen and withdrawn," Sally said. "As if they needed a good purging,
but harmless enough."

Lucas wasn't
so sure. Even when their cabin was finished -- hewn timber walls and a
thick roof thatched with reeds and grasses, as was permitted north of
the wall -- he went every night to his bed with the musket loaded and
at hand. People in the town told endless stories of women who'd been raped,
children murdered, men tortured before they were killed, and years of
work gone up in flames when a homestead was burned to the ground.

One good
thing: the Dutch had never been greedy enough or stupid enough to sell
guns to the tribes living closest to them. In the vicinity of Nieuw Amsterdam,
superior weapons gave the Europeans an advantage, though they were outnumbered.
In the far north, near Dutch Fort Orange, there was constant fighting
with the marauding Catskill and Wawarsink tribes who had been armed by
the French and the English, desperate to have the Indians take sides in
their wars over colonial territory. It seemed an idiotic policy to Lucas.
If you had to choose between trusting a savage or trusting your gun, the
weapon won every time.

Sometimes,
long after dark, when he heard the sounds of strange night birds calling
to one another in the surrounding woods, he remembered the stories he'd
heard about ritual fires where death came after hours of screaming agony,
and about mutilation that began with the toes and moved slowly upward.
Lying awake in the night, Lucas put his hand to his head and wondered
whether a man was always dead before some savage peeled off his scalp.
And whether Sally had heard as many stories of rape and torture as he
had.

They were
too busy to speak of such things. The earth around their cabin was black
and rich. The first season, despite how late she was getting things in
the ground, nearly all the seeds Sally brought with her sprouted and thrived.
She planted local vegetables as well, the pumpkins and Indian corn the
settlers had adopted as basic foods, and at Lucas's urging she gave over
a large field at the edge of their cleared land to poppies. "I need enough
laudanum, Sal, so I can perform any surgery I want and the patient will
not run screaming from the knife."

"For the
patient's sake, of course," Sally said.

"Of course."

"You're
a liar, Lucas Turner. You want the people you're cutting to be all but
senseless because that way, once you cut into them, you can take your
time and study how they're made."

"Aye, there's
some truth in that." Lucas spoke without looking up. It was October, five
months after their arrival, and he was sitting by the fire in their cabin,
using the light to write by. "Truth, but no harm."

"You're
a barber, Lucas, not a surgeon. Only surgeons are permitted to perform
an anatomy."

"You're
contradicting yourself, Sal. It's not an anatomy if the patient is alive.
Only if you cut open a corpse."

"Don't lecture
me, Lucas. According to Company rules, you are not a surgeon. If they
were to discover what you're doing, we -- "

"Are you
entirely mad, girl? We're in Nieuw Netherland, not New England. And the
Company is on the other side of the ocean. Do you think any English magistrate
is going to live through eleven weeks on one of those hell ships just
to come and see whether Lucas Turner is being a good boy?"

"I suppose
not." She finished wiping clean the pewter bowls they'd used for their
stew of rabbit and corn, and placed them neatly on the shelf above the
hearth.

The pewter
bowls had come from a gentlewoman in England. Lucas had moved away the
veil that made her blind in her right eye. The literature on the subject
went back to the great practitioners of the mystic East, but it was an
operation so delicate -- only the very tip of the lancet could be used,
and the amount of pressure applied was critical -- that three English
surgeons had refused to attempt it. After he said he would, and did so
successfully, Lucas was expelled from the Company on the grounds that
he, a barber, possessed surgical instruments. If the woman had died, perhaps
he would have been dealt with more leniently. Since she lived and thrived,
the jealous surgeons hounded Lucas and Sally from London.

He watched
Sally put away the pewter bowls. A penny to a pound the surgeons who made
such grief for him still ate their suppers off wood.

Sally caught
his smile and saw her chance. "Lucas, things are going well for us here,
are they not? Your business is doing well?"

"They are
and it is. And if you'd stop worrying about me so I could stop worrying
about you, everything would be perfect."

"I'll try,
Lucas. Meanwhile" -- she turned away, so she wouldn't have to look at
him -- "I've been meaning to ask you..."

"What? Go
ahead, Sal, ask."

"Since we're
here and you have so much custom...Is there enough money to put some by
for a dowry?"

It was something
they'd talked about before they left Rotterdam. With a dowry, Sally might
find a husband who was worthy of her. It was the only chance at marriage
she'd have, since she wouldn't accept a man of the class they'd come from,
and Lucas had sworn he wouldn't force one on her. "I've thought of it,
Sal. But often as not I'm paid in wampum rather than guilders, and --
"

"Everyone
uses wampum here. It's as good as money. I'm sure wampum would do for
at least part of a dowry."

"Perhaps
you're right. I'll do some asking, Sal. And keep my eyes open for someone
who wouldn't mind -- " He broke off.

"Wouldn't
mind what, Lucas?"

"That you're
nearly twenty-four. And..."

"And not
comely."

"I didn't
say that."

"You may
as well have."

"No. What
I was going to say was 'Nearly twenty-four, and more clever than any man
I'm likely to find in need of a wife here in Nieuw Amsterdam.'"

*

Three years
earlier, during the typhoid epidemic of 1659, Stuyvesant had established
a hospital for those who had not long to live. The worst of the town's
whores and drunkards, most of them. Decent folk died in their homes. The
hospital had five beds in which, at no cost and purely for the love of
Almighty God, the undeserving indigent were allowed to die.

The good
women of the town saw it as their duty to care for the dying, however
unworthy. Anna Stuyvesant was frequently seen at the hospital. Occasionally
the governor's wife also came. Judith Bayard (though a French Huguenot,
she followed the Dutch custom of retaining her own name after marriage)
was beautiful, but also a woman of strict rectitude. Even the dying were
less likely to scream and curse when she was present. So, too, when the
wife of the rector of the Dutch Reformed Church did some of the nursing.
Sally Turner, on the other hand, inspired no awe. She got the full brunt
of the patients' misery and discontent. Nonetheless, she appeared the
most consistently of all the nursing women.

Nearly every
day the juffrouw Turner and her basket could be seen walking along the
narrow woodland path between her brother's plantage and the town, entering
through the west gate in the sturdy wooden wall, hurrying along the wide
Brede Wegh, skirting the small offshoot of the main canal known as Bever's
Gracht, then crossing by the narrow bridge that led to Jews Lane.

That was
the only part of the walk Sally disliked. The Jews were fairly recent
arrivals, a remnant from a settlement in Brazil. Stuyvesant was known
to loathe them, but he'd been forced to let them in because there were
Dutch Jews among the directors of the West India Company.

Just walking
past the Jews' yellow brick houses below the mill made the back of Sally's
neck prickle. All those stories of strange rituals involving the blood
of Christian children...She could never get through the lane fast enough.
Sally was glad to gather up her skirts for the passage through Coenties
Alley, always slick with mud, toward the three-story stone building that
stood at the water's edge.

Until the
year before, the structure had been merely Nieuw Amsterdam's largest tavern
and its only inn. When Stuyvesant needed somewhere big enough for all
the townspeople to meet, he made it the Stadt Huys, the city hall, as
well. Coenties Slip, leading to the town wharf, was in front of the Stadt
Huys. Nearby were the town storehouses. Above them, in five workshops
that had formerly been leased to the shipwrights, was the hospital.

There were
two windows in the hospital. The dying stank, so the windows were kept
open except in the worst of weather. While she went about her duties Sally
could look out and see the short street called Hall Place, and the door
to the butcher's house Lucas visited so frequently.

To buy the
pig bladders and sheep intestines he needed in his craft, Sally told herself.
That's why her brother was so often at the butcher's on Hall Place. And
never mind that it was a ten-minute walk from Lucas's shop. After all,
he came to the hospital a few times a week to see if anyone needed bleeding
or surgery, so naturally --

"Juffrouw...Please,
juffrouw..." A woman's voice. A few hours earlier, weeks before her time
and squatting in the alley behind the Blue Dove alehouse on Pearl Street,
she'd given birth to twins -- dead, and that was a blessing. One had no
legs, the other a huge hole in the top of its head. The woman, a notorious
whore, had been bleeding since the birth. Sally figured she'd be dead
within the next hour or two.

"Please,
juffrouw, can you give me something as stops the burning in my chest?
Him over there" -- the woman nodded toward the man in the next bed, a
drunk who the previous day had had the lower half of his body crushed
by a falling barrel but refused to allow Lucas to saw off his legs --
"he says you can."

Sally reached
into her basket for a salve of saxifrage and egg yolk, and made herself
stop thinking about her brother's too-frequent visits to the butcher's
on Hall Place.

*

"Good day
to you, mevrouw." There was no one else in the shop. Lucas didn't have
to keep the twinkle from his eye or the laughter from his voice.

"And to
you, barber. I've something put by just for you. The intestines of a large
cow. Come in the back and see."

Marit Graumann,
wife of Ankel Jannssen, stepped from behind the wooden block. Her husband
was one of the town's twelve "sworn butchers," permitted to slaughter
cattle inside the wall. He paid the tax for a stall in the Broadway Shambles,
the market across from the fort, and was required to be there every morning
except Sunday. In the afternoon he was permitted to do business from his
home. All well and good, except that after Marit gave him his dinner Ankel
always stumbled off to bed in a drunken stupor. She herself had to hack
apart the meats and poultry sold from the house on Hall Place.

A curtain
of burlap separated the front from the rear of the shop. Marit pushed
it aside and waited for Lucas. As soon as he brushed past her he felt
himself get hard. She had a special smell. A woman smell. He'd had countless
whores in London and Rotterdam, even a few here, but none had ever smelled
like Marit. Neither did the women who came to him for treatment. They
reeked of illness, often of filth. Mevrouw Marit Graumann smelled of flowers.
And her lust had a dark and seductive fragrance of its own. Lucas had
never before been with a woman who actually desired him. The experience
was intoxicating.

It was foolhardy
to visit the Hall Place house as often as he did, he knew, but he didn't
stop. The butcher's wife was as blond as he was dark, and almost as tall.
Her body was lush and full. When he held her, Marit's flesh yielded to
him, seemed to melt against his. What he could see of it in the dimness
behind the butcher shop where all their meetings had taken place was pink
and white, and always, when he was near, flushed with longing.

She led
him past the hanging carcasses to the corner of the room they used and
that she kept clear for the purpose. The floor of the storeroom, like
that of the shop, was covered in sawdust, and she dared not make her husband
suspicious by sweeping it clean. They had to couple standing, but that
didn't inhibit them. When Marit turned to him she'd already loosed the
ties of her bodice.

Lucas put
both hands on her full breasts. He stroked them gently. He'd never known
such softness; only the nipples were hard. "Suck them," she whispered.
"Lucas, please, suck them. I cannot wait another moment."

He buried
his face in her breasts, sucking both nipples, one after another. Dear
God, the smell. And the velvet skin that burned wherever he touched it.
She was trembling in his arms.

"Lucas,
ah Lucas...I dream about you every moment. Waking and sleeping. I live
only to feel what I feel when I give myself to you."

He began
fumbling himself out of his breeches. She started to lift her skirts.
Suddenly there was a clattering above their heads. They froze. Another
sound, louder than the first. Then silence.

"It's all
right," Marit whispered after a few seconds. "The bedroom is just above.
He must have knocked something over. He drank three mugs of geneva and
two of rum with his dinner. He will not wake for hours."

Lucas stared
up at the splintered wooden planks and the rough timbers that formed both
the ceiling above his head and the floor of the Jannssen's bedroom. Ankel
Jannssen was a hulking brute of a man, a drunken animal. He had no right
to a woman like Marit, but he had her nonetheless. God help them. If the
butcher found out he could go to law, have Marit whipped and turned into
the streets with only the clothes on her back. And everything Lucas owned
would be forfeit to him.

Sweet Jesus,
this was insane. Why did he continue to do it? Because even now, after
that moment of stomach-churning fear, he was again hard as a rock and
raging for her.

Marit was
breathing through her mouth, the tip of her tongue tracing the outline
of her lips. "Lucas," she whispered, and lifted her skirt and her petticoats,
held them above her waist, and leaned aginst the wall and spread her legs.
"Take me, Lucas. Do whatever you want to me. Only kiss me while you do
it. Let me feel your tongue in my mouth."

He put his
lips on hers and sucked her breath into his body. His hands were on her
buttocks, squeezing the hot flesh, pulling her toward him. His cock knew
where to go. It had learned the way these past three months. She began
to moan. He thrust deeper into her, squeezed harder. She trembled more.
Her moans came faster. The sounds she made grew louder.

The bell
on the shop door rang. "Mevrouw Graumann, are you serving?"

They had
long since decided that locking the door would arouse more suspicion than
Marit's absence from the front of the shop. Lucas took his mouth from
Marit's. She turned her face to the flimsy curtain that separated them
from the waiting customer. "I'll be with you immediately, mijnheer --
a moment only."

"Ja,
fine. I'll wait."

Marit leaned
her head back. Lucas could see her face in the dim light. Her cheeks were
flushed, her skin dewy with the sweat of her passion. He could smell her.
She looked into his eyes. He began thrusting again. Slowly at first, then
faster. She closed her eyes and bit her lips to stifle the sounds of her
delight. Watching her, feeling her shiver and tremble in his arms, was
the most exciting thing he had ever experienced. He finished in a burst
of such indescribable pleasure it left him hungry for more, knowing full
well he could never have enough.

A moment
later she'd laced her bodice and adjusted her skirts. Marit patted her
hair into place and went out into the front room. Lucas heard her discussing
the relative merits of pork and venison and soon after, the sound of her
cleaver hacking apart the meat the customer had chosen.

From his
corner of the storeroom Lucas could see a side of beef hanging from a
hook in the wall, still dripping blood onto the sawdust. A pig's head
hung from a second hook, a large and formless drape of cow's intestines
from a third. Lucas had mentioned that he'd like to try making ligatures
from that rather than the intestines of a sheep. There were a couple of
pig bladders as well. They were probably also for him. Lucas could never
have too many pig bladders.

"Lucas,
come out front now. He's gone."

Marit was
standing in the storeroom of the doorway, beckoning to him. Lucas went
to her, but he drew her to his side of the curtain. "Marit, we must stop
this. It is insane. What if you were to find yourself with child? Or --
"

"In seven
years of marriage, Lucas, I have not conceived. But if I were with child,
people would assume it was my husband's."

He felt
the rush of blood to his head, knew his face was dark with anger. "I cannot
bear the thought of that pig touching -- "

"Ssh, calm
yourself. He almost never does. Ankel prefers drink to me."

He took
her face between his hands, began kissing her cheeks and her nose and
her forehead. "Ah, Marit, Marit...We are mad. This is incredibly dangerous.
The consequences are -- "

"I want
to go to the woods with you." It was as if she hadn't heard him. "I have
been thinking of it for days and days. I want to take off all my clothes
and all your clothes, and lie down on the clean earth and have you lie
atop me."

"Marit,
we can't. What if -- "

She lifted
his hands to her lips and began kissing them, sucking his fingers. Drawing
each deep between her pursed lips, keeping her gaze locked on his all
the while. "You would not believe the things I want to do to you, Lucas,
to have you do to me. I do not believe them. They come into my head and
I do not know from where. Think of a way, my darling. It will have to
be a Sunday when the shop is closed. Ankel sleeps all Sunday afternoon.
You live far from the town. Find a place we can meet and tell me how to
get there."

*

Sally also
had secrets. Hers, too, involved women. Indian women.

The contact
began the first autumn, when they had been only a few months in Nieuw
Amsterdam. Sally came across a little Indian girl gathering rose hips
in the woods near the cabin. The child ran as soon as she saw the white
woman standing nearby, but apparently the bushes near the Turner homestead
were specially prized, because she kept returning. There was another accidental
meeting, and soon a third. Each time the girl and the woman came a little
nearer to trust.

Finally
the moment came when the youngster stood still long enough for Sally to
point to the rose hips she was collecting and to simulate a loud sneeze.

The child
giggled. Then she also pretended to sneeze. Next she, too, pointed to
the contents of her basket and made an exaggerated wiping motion across
her face.

"Yes, exactly,"
Sally said, "rose hips ease the winter sickness. And do you, I wonder,
make them into a tisane as I would?" She made the motions of pouring water
from a jug to a pot and placing it over a fire. The little girl nodded
furiously in agreement, an enormous smile on her face. "Ah, so you do!
How I wish you could tell me what else you gather from these woods and
how you use it."

The child
smiled. "Tamaka," she said. "Ta-ma-ka." Then she grabbed her basket and
ran.

A few days
later the child appeared again, this time at the edge of the clearing
surrounding the cabin. She was carrying two ears of Indian corn. Sally
went out to meet her with a mug of homemade root beer.

Sally and
Tamaka communicated mostly by signs at first; then each learned a few
words of the other's language. Finally they developed a shared language
of their own -- part signs, part English, part the tongue of the child's
people -- in which they communicated with ease.

Tamaka told
Sally about how once, long ago before the white people came to this island,
the place the Turners' cabin stood had been special. It was where women
went to give birth; that was why the healing plants here were filled with
so much power. Another day the child led her new friend to a thicket where
the blackberries grew larger than any Sally had ever seen. And yet another
time she showed Sally a shy yellow iris that grew in hidden places beside
streams, and explained that the root of the plant could be made into a
paste that was good for burns.

In return
Sally showed Tamaka the sweet-smelling pink gillyflowers whose seed she
had brought with her from Holland. They could be steeped in honey and
the syrup used to treat sore throats, as well as made into a poultice
to ease bruises of the ankles and wrists. She gave Tamaka some seed to
take back to her village. A few days later Tamaka brought her mother and
her aunt to see the gillyflowers growing in Sally Turner's garden.

That first
winter Sally saw Tamaka many times, but she didn't see the older women
again until the following summer. Not until Tamaka brought her to the
outskirts of the Indian village, and the women who had visited Sally came
to meet them. On that occasion, looking grave and purposeful, they led
Tamaka's friend to see the gillyflowers growing in their fields among
the pumpkins and the squash and the corn.

Sally never
mentioned any of this to her brother. It was the first real secret she'd
ever kept from him, but she knew what would happen if she told. Lucas
would rail at her about savages. He'd make her swear she wouldn't again
go to the Indian village. This little corner of her life, Sally decided,
she would keep from her brother. In the interest of peace.

She kept
that promise to herself for two years, until a summer's day in 1663 when
she staggered screaming into the barber shop, carrying Tamaka's limp body.
"Lucas! Are you here? Lucas!"

"Sally,
what's wrong? What -- In Christ's name, girl, who are you bringing me?"

"Tamaka.
She...in the woods...Oh, God..." Sally had carried the child all the way
from the cabin to the town, and she was so exhausted she was barely coherent.
"Tamaka." She put the girl on Lucas's surgical table and, relieved of
her burden, leaned against the wall, panting. "Tamaka."

Lucas stared
at his sister. He made no move toward the child.

"Her hand.
Look." It was all she could manage. Sally slid down the wall and huddled
in a heap on the floor, hanging her head between her splayed knees, sucking
air into her lungs, waiting for the fiery pain in her chest to subside
and her legs and arms to stop quivering.

Lucas glanced
at the girl Sally wanted him to examine. The front of her deerskin skirt
was soaked in blood. She lay perfectly still. Only the faint rise and
fall of her bare chest told him she was alive. Lucas went to his sister,
bent over her, put his hand on her shoulder. "Here, girl, you're half
dead with fatigue. Hang on a minute. I'll run across the road and get
you a draught of ale."

"Not me.
Tamaka." The words came a little easier now. "Look at her hand, Lucas."

He turned
his head and glanced at the girl on the table. "Sally, she's a squaw brat.
An Indian. One less of them means a few less of us to be murdered in our
beds."

Lucas had
adopted the colonial summer fashion of wearing a tightly belted leather
jerkin in place of a coat. Sally reached up and grabbed its hem. "It's
not like that. Don't turn away, Lucas. Look at me. For the love of Jesus
Christ, she is a child! And she's my friend."

"Your what?"

"My friend.
I've known her almost as long as we've been here. We were gathering orris
roots in the swamp. She was using a tomahawk. It slipped and she cut her
fingers off. I brought them to you. I brought you Tamaka's fingers, Lucas,
so you can sew them back on. The ancient Egyptians did it. You told me
so. You can do it, too. Please, Lucas. Please."

Despite
himself, Sally's words thrilled him. He'd read of such operations. Back
in London he'd even heard of a case in Prussia where a foot was sewn back
on, though later it turned black with gangrene and the patient died. But
a child's fingers...Small, malleable, an excellent place to practice such
surgery. And this was a squaw brat, so it didn't matter if she lived or
died.

Sally was
still clinging to his jerkin. Lucas detached her hands and turned to the
treatment table.

Above the
blood-soaked skirt he could see the child's budding breasts. She did not
move. Lucas thought she was still unconscious; then he looked into her
face. She was wide awake and staring at him. Her large dark eyes gave
away nothing of what she might be feeling, not even her pain.

She was
holding her left hand with her right, both clasped over her belly. Lucas
touched her hands. She did not relax her grip and her eyes never left
his face. "She won't let me touch her."

Sally struggled
to her feet and came to the table. She stood beside Tamaka, stroked her
forehead and her cheeks. "It's all right, my dear. Brother, mine." She
linked her thumbs in one of their private signs. "He can help you." She
turned to Lucas. "You can examine her now."

Lucas peered
at the damage to the left hand. Sally had bandaged the wound with sumac
leaves and wrapped her shawl around it, but the blood had soaked through
everything. He took the shawl and the leaves away. Three small fingers
fell to the floor.

Lucas knelt
down and reclaimed them. They were cut clean, but on an awkward slant.
"A challenge," he murmured.

"It's a
fascinating surgery." Lucas had made up his mind. "Come, Sal, assist me."

She had
helped him before and knew exactly what he'd want. She rushed to pour
wine into a pot hanging over the fireplace. Lucas always kept a fire going,
though in these hot days of August it was well banked. Sally poked at
the logs, making them flare, then rushed back to the other side of the
room for his instrument case and opened it. Finally she went to the store
of simples for the jug of laudanum.

"No." Lucas
was cleaning the wound, swabbing the bloody stumps.

"For the
pain," Sally whispered. "She will suffer so much less."

"And appreciate
less what we're doing for her. No laudanum, Sal. I can't spare it." The
child's hand had largely stopped bleeding. "How did you know to pack the
wound with sumac leaves? It seems they're excellent for the purpose."

"Tamaka
showed me. The Indians use sumac for hemorrhage."

"Kept her
wits about her, did she? After her mischance with the tomahawk."

"No, she
fainted. I mean she'd told me about the sumac before."

"Ah, yes,
I forgot. You've known her since we arrived. Though you never thought
to mention it before now."

"Lucas,
I -- "

"It doesn't
matter. I forgive you, Sally. We need not discuss it again." He was examining
the severed fingers while he spoke. "Won't be a great deal left of these
after I even them up. But worth trying all the same."

"Of course
I'm not. I simply -- Can you do it, Lucas? Sew her fingers back on?"

"I don't
know. But it's interesting to try."

Lucas began
working on the detached fingers. Sally took up her post beside Tamaka,
stroking her head, murmuring soothing words. Lucas paid no attention to
his sister and the child. He was intent on sawing the splintered bone
from the severed fingers, leaving a clean cut, then using a razor to clip
the mangled flesh. Finally he dropped the fingers in the wine that was
simmering over the fire.

It was one
of Lucas's distinctions as a practitioner that he used wine the way the
ancients had, to wash wounds and to soak bandages before applying them.
He wasn't entirely sure why, but he was convinced that wine often helped
the healing. And it really would be more interesting if this girl lived
with her fingers sewn back on than if she took his handiwork to an early
grave. "Now let's see about the hand, shall we?"

Lucas put
a piece of board beneath Tamaka's hand. He strapped it to her arm. "Hold
her down," he told Sally. "If she moves she's liable to have no hand as
well as no fingers."

"She won't
move," Sally said.

Lucas looked
up. "Hold her," he said. He chose his smallest saw, the one with the finest
teeth, and bent over his patient.

Lucas could
make no attempt to reunite the bones or the sinew. All he could do was
stitch the fingers back in place and hope nature would somehow nourish
them. The books spoke of the body leaking blood into the once-severed
part, enough to keep it from turning gangrenous and sending poison through
the entire system. The best he could do was create a clean place for the
join. He must trim away the damaged flesh and bone on the hand exactly
as he had on the fingers.

He began
to saw. Slow, careful strokes, as if he were paring toenails. The girl
didn't move. Lucas lifted his head, glanced at his patient and his sister.
Sally's face was screwed up in a grimace, as if she suffered the child's
pain. Tamaka had not changed her expression.

A few more
minutes, then the sawing was finished. Lucas took his most delicate scalpel
and began trimming the shredded flesh. Each time he raised his head and
looked at Tamaka she was looking at him. She made no sound.

"Tough,"
Lucas said when he was done preparing for the surgery. "Very tough, your
friend. No wonder she and her kind are so hard to get rid of."

Sally swallowed
her rage. Lucas was simply repeating what he'd heard. "Indian women don't
utter a single cry when they give birth, Lucas. It's a matter of honor
with them. Do you know any white woman who can do the same?"

"Couldn't
say." He didn't look at her. "Birthing's not my line of country. Get me
the stanching powder."

She got
it and Lucas applied it liberally to the wounded hand. Then he took up
the index finger and began to sew. Small, dainty stitches, close together,
making an overlap of the skin from the stub of the hand so that there
would be strength enough to hold in place the finger that was not attached
by bone. It took him nearly four minutes to sew on the first finger. Then
he moved on to the second.

"They're
at least a third shorter than they were," he said when he was finished.
"But that's her doing, not mine. And she won't be able to move them, of
course."

Sally dismissed
this with a shake of her head. "That doesn't matter. It's missing parts
that would make her unacceptable. To the braves."

"How nice
to know that if she lives, your little friend can make more Indians to
come and burn us out."

"Tamaka
would never do such a thing. Neither would her people. Lucas -- she will
live, won't she?"

"Truthfully?"
Sally nodded. "I can't say. But I've done my work carefully and she's
young and strong. I suspect she will."

"You've
done a great thing, Lucas. You and I, we'll have nothing to fear from
the Indians after this."

*

A week after
the surgery, two of Tamaka's restored fingers had turned black. "Too bad,"
Lucas said. "Still, it was interesting to try."

"Lucas,
what about Tamaka? If she -- "

"If the
black fingers don't come off, she'll die. I've seen it many times. First
the blackened flesh signaling the gangrene. Next the fever. Then death."

"And if
I can get her to agree, will you take off the black fingers for her?"

Lucas hesitated
only a moment. "Why not? But it will have to be here in the cabin, not
at my shop in town. We were lucky last time. I don't want to chance it
again."

"Chance
what?"

"Being seen
operating on a squaw brat."

As it turned
out, Lucas needn't have worried. Sally went to the village. Tamaka's aunt
appeared. "Tamaka," Sally said, "please, I must see her. My brother has
agreed to help her. It's very important that she -- " The Indian woman
lifted her finger and put it over Sally's lips. Then she turned and walked
away.

Another
week went by and Tamaka didn't appear. Finally, Sally screwed up her courage
and returned to the Indian village. At first no one came to meet her.
She stood at the edge of the cluster of bark-covered huts and waited the
way she always did. A couple of the women glanced toward her on their
way to work in their fields, but no one approached. Sally could think
of nothing to do except stay where she was and wait. Eventually an old
woman walked over to her. "Tamaka," Sally said, pointing to her own hand.
"How is she?"

Apparently
the woman had been chosen as emissary because she had a few words of English.
"Tamaka dead," she said.

III

"Good afternoon,
barber. I am Jacob Van der Vries."

Lucas looked
up and saw a thickset man, not tall, but with an air of importance. He
had startlingly red hair, a small red beard, and an exceptionally full
red mustache. And though he'd spoken in English, his accent was plainly
of the Low Countries. "Good afternoon, mijnheer. I presume it's shaving
you were wanting?"

"No, not
shaving."

"Delousing,
then?" Lucas rose from the stool beside the fire -- it was a dark day
in early December and he'd been using the light to write by -- and carried
his journal to the surgical table.

"Not delousing
either," the Dutchman said. "What do you have there?"

"Some notes
on various ailments. Nothing for you to worry about, I imagine. You do
not look ill."

On the contrary,
Van der Vries looked particularly healthy. Rich, as well. The cuffs of
his shirt were ruffled lace. His belt was buckled with polished silver
and strained to keep his coat together over his well-fed paunch. "I haven't
seen you in the town before," Lucas said. "Does that mean you've just
arrived?"

"A few days
past. And you are right, I am not ill. But your notes do interest me,
barber." Van der Vries held out his hand. "May I see?"

"No. They
are simply notes, so someday I can make a fuller account of what I've
observed in two and a half years in Nieuw Amsterdam." Lucas locked his
journal away. "Now, if you don't want shaving or delousing, and you don't
need bleeding, what brings you to me, Mijnheer Van der Vries?"

"Actually,
I am Jacob Van der Vries, Practitioner of Physic."

"Ah, I see."
Lucas pocketed the key to the drawer in the surgical table. "A physician."

"Indeed.
I was apprenticed to the most fashionable practitioner in The Hague. And
for a time I served the sick in your fine city of Cambridge. Now I am
in the employ of the Dutch West India Company. So we shall be seeing quite
a bit of each other, barber. I shall call on you when my patients require
bleeding. And now that there is someone to oversee your activities here,
you will perhaps no longer feel it necessary to make notes of -- "

The door
swung open so hard both halves thwacked against the wall. "Business for
you, barber! Bring 'em here, lads!" Four soldiers trotted behind the sergeant,
carrying two stretchers. "Savages -- attacked the Bronck bouwerie
and the little plantage of old man Heerik. Burned them to the ground.
Left seven dead. Fortunately one of our patrols happened to be passing.
Ran the bloodthirsty animals off Heerik's land before they finished the
job. Two of the wounded seemed worth bringing to you."

One of the
stretchers carried a young woman, unconscious, an arrow still in her gut.
Her pale blond hair dragged on the ground, because her scalp was half
off. The second victim was an old man. He had three arrows in him, but
he was awake and his hair was still tight on his head. "Forget me," he
whispered as the soldiers put his stretcher down. "See to my daughter."

"Ja,
ja, be calm. I will see to you both." It was Van der Vries who answered,
and Van der Vries who was bending over the young woman, examining the
remarkable head wound.

Lucas was
more interested in the soldier. "My sister, Sergeant! She is alone. Our
plantage isn't far from -- "

"It's all
right. We've already sent patrols to bring the families from the nearby
farms into the fort until we catch the war party."

Van der
Vries removed his jacket and held it out to Lucas. "Here, barber. Put
this somewhere it will stay clean. Then put another log on that fire.
I will have to get the cauterizing iron good and hot to deal with this
wound."

Lucas took
the other man's coat and slung it over his shoulder. "I don't have a cauterizing
iron, Mijnheer Physician. In fact, I don't believe in cauterizing. Though
logs we have aplenty, and I'm happy to put as many on the fire as you
wish."

Van der
Vries leaned forward and squinted. He seemed to be studying Lucas. "You
don't believe -- What can you possibly know about medical treatment?"

"I am a
surgeon as well as a barber."

"Ach, so
that's it. A surgeon. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, since everyone
calls you barber. Instead I find you are one of those butchers who practice
their foul trade on human flesh. Well, I am here now, surgeon or barber
or whichever you are, and -- "

"And the
patient is weakening while we argue." Lucas took a step closer to the
woman on the stretcher. "The skull is not injured, and there hasn't been
overmuch bleeding. If we are quick and use some of my sister's stanching
powder, and bathe the wound with wine and sew the scalp back on, then
get that arrow out of her gut, she might even survive."

"Stanching
powder. Now, that is something interesting. Where does your sister get
this stanching powder?"

"She --
"

"I make
it from the root of the plant the herbalists call Achillea, mijnheer.
You probably know it as yarrow." Sally was removing her shawl as she came
into the surgery. "The soldiers brought me, Lucas. They told me what happened.
And about the good physician being here." She was already at the dispensing
bench, shaking the dried and powdered yarrow root onto a sheet of birch
bark. "Good day to you, mijnheer."

Van der
Vries looked in her direction. The squint remained in place. "Interesting,"
he murmured. "The cutter has his own resident apothecary. Tell me, what
part of England are you from?"

"Dover in
Kent," Lucas said, "originally."

"Ah, the
provinces. I thought so from your accents." The Dutchman turned to the
patient, bent over her, and began squinting at her wound. "But of course
you'll have studied your trade in London, no?"

"Yes," Lucas
said. "In London."

Sally caught
her breath. She covered by quickly handing her brother the piece of bark
containing the stanching powder. "Here, Lucas, it's ready."

Lucas moved
toward the young woman lying on the stretcher. Her breathing was very
shallow. There wasn't a great deal of time. "Sally, have you some stimulating
tonic?"

"I think
so. If not here, then in my bas -- Yes, here it is." She was unstopping
a small flask as she spoke, reaching for her dosing spoon.

"A decoction
of Digitalis purpuria. Foxglove to you, mijnheer. Gerard and Culpepper
are both -- "

"Foxglove.
Please, you must refresh my memory. The flowers are shaped like the heart?
Or is it perhaps the lungs?"

Sally stared
at him. Lucas made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh and got
ready to dust the patient's head wound with stanching powder. Van der
Vries darted forward. He moved with astonishing speed for a man of his
bulk. Before Lucas could begin sprinkling the yarrow on the wound, the
Dutchman had pushed his hand away. The precious powder was scattered on
the floor.

"Good God,
man! Do you see what you've done? How can -- "

"I am a
physician in the Company's employ. That means I am responsible for these
poor people, barber. And apparently both you and your sister are ignorant
of the doctrine of signatures. The juffrouw Sally tells us she makes her
stimulating tonic from a plant the flowers of which look neither like
a heart or a lung, and her stanching powder from, of all things, yarrow.
Yellow flowers, not red. Yarrow cannot, therefore, be effective in anything
to do with bloody wounds."

"You're
not serious, man?" Then, after a few seconds, "Sweet Jesus, you are. I
don't believe -- C'mon, Sal, simpling's your line of country. Tell him.
The doctrine of signatures was disproved...what? Thirty years past?"

Sally was
still holding the decoction of foxglove and the dosing spoon. "Lucas,
the woman, she's barely breath -- "

"Yes, he
did. Over forty years ago. It took time for his ideas to be accepted,
but now every apothecary agrees."

"Thank you.
Here, Sal, give me that." Lucas took the tonic from her, and the spoon.
The woman was unconscious, but he managed to get a few drops between her
lips. "Let's see how she responds to that before we give her more. And
we have to deal with the head wound, or it won't matter."

Van der
Vries looked at Sally; indeed, he seemed to be studying her, but he spoke
to Lucas. "Since there has not before been a practicing, I might say a
practical, physician to take charge of your activities, I will ignore
your dosing of my patient without my permission. And since you have no
cauterizing iron, I assure you there is nothing to be done for her head
wound until the soldier returns with my bag."

Lucas began
threading a needle with catgut.

"I swear,
barber, you will not sew up this woman's head before I have cauterized
her skull."

"Fried her
brain, more like."

"Wounds
burn the body. Fire is needed to treat fire. A first principle of medicine.
Though of course you know nothing about that, either. I will not -- Ah."

A young
corporal came in. He handed a fair-sized leather satchel to Van der Vries.
The physician snapped it open and pulled out a long iron rod with an ivory
handle. He went to the fire and shoved the metal part of the device deep
into the red-hot embers. "It needs to be as hot as we can make it. Nothing
else will do. We must wait."

Lucas looked
at Sally. She shrugged. He looked at the young woman, whose breathing
was if anything even shallower. He thought of giving her more of the stimulating
tonic, but by the time he finished Van der Vries would be ready to burn
her alive. Lucas turned to the old man still lying on the stretcher on
the floor. "You said she was your daughter. What do you want done? Do
you want this Van der Vries here to burn her skull, or me to sew her scalp
back on?"

There was
no answer.

Sally crouched
beside the old man. She put her hand beneath his shirt and over his heart
and waited a few seconds. "He's dead, Lucas."

The soldier
meanwhile had been staring at the half-scalped woman, fascinated with
her extraordinary wound. "So's this one. Leastwise, she don't seem like
she's breathin'."

Lucas went
to the table and put his hand on the woman's chest, then leaned down and
pressed his ear to her heart. Nothing. Sally appeared beside him, holding
a shard of silvered glass. Lucas took it and held it to the woman's lips,
then leaned toward the light of the fire to study the result. There was
no haze of moisture. "She's dead. Damn your eyes, Van der Vries, we've
lost her. The old man as well."

Van der
Vries took the cauterizing iron from the fire and laid it carefully on
the hearth to cool. He became for a moment entirely preoccupied with his
lace cuffs, examining first one then the other. When he spoke, his voice
was very soft. "So much for your stimulating tonic, Mistress Sally." Then,
to Lucas, "From now on my instructions will be followed without question.
Do you understand?"

"I understand
that you're a -- "

"A practicing
physician. And in England, as in my country, physicians oversee surgeons
and barbers, not the other way around. Is that not so? Come, Mijnheer
Turner, the barber who also practices surgery: this soldier and I are
waiting for your answer."

"It's so."

"Good. An
honest man, however ignorant. I hoped that would be the case." Van der
Vries continued to adjust his lace cuffs. "Corporal, you must tell your
superiors that in the future any injured are to be brought directly to
me. If I need the barber's services, I will send for him."

*

The worms
were black, many-segmented, each about three inches long. Van der Vries
had nearly a pint of them. They made a throbbing black aggregation inside
his large glass jug stoppered with thick cork. From the shadows where
he stood Lucas saw the squirming mass as a single entity, but he knew
what he was looking at. Hirudo medicinalis. Leeches.

Customarily
Lucas checked the hospital once every day or two. In the week since the
Indians attacked, since Van der Vries arrived in the colony, he'd been
too busy. Treating arrow wounds, mostly. The Canarsie and the Shinnecock
and the Raritan -- all local tribes -- were on the warpath.

Only once
had Indians breached Nieuw Amsterdam's defenses. In 1655 a Wappinger war
party managed to land their canoes a short distance from the fort and
rampage through the streets. On that occasion Stuyvesant had been far
north, at Fort Orange. This time he was at home. The southern shore was
bristling with men-at-arms, and there were sentries every ten feet along
the wall. Naturally enough, every colonist living in the Voorstadt and
beyond had sought protection in the town. The settlement was heaving with
people. In response the savages had mounted a siege.

And in the
midst of all this, Lucas had Jacob Van der Vries to deal with. A man who
believed in the doctrine of signatures three decades after every sensible
physician had discarded the theory, and who had apparently provided himself
with a supply of the black worms that did a barber's job without the necessity
of a scalpel.

Lucas left
the protection of the doorway. "Good afternoon, Mijnheer Van der Vries.
I take it your patient needs bleeding."

"Ah, barber.
Yes, I believe bleeding would profit this poor creature. But I won't be
needing you. I have my little friends." Van der Vries held up the glass
jar. The leeches that had been trying to climb the slick sides had given
up. The black mass was still. In the parlance of the trade, the leeches
were relaxed: meaning they were in the optimum state to attach themselves
to human flesh and suck blood.

Lucas nodded
toward the jar. "Found them here, did you? They're too big to be from
Holland."

"Indeed
they're not. Came from a pond not five minutes' walk from my house. Remarkably
large, don't you agree?"

"I do. That's
the difficulty with them. Leeches suck until they're full before they
drop off. Those we grow here in Nieuw Netherland take a lot of filling."

"All to
the good." Van der Vies was busy opening his bag. "Going to do something,
you might as well do it right, I always say. Never saw any point in half
measures."

Lucas leaned
toward the patient. The woman was unconscious, perhaps forty and gaunt
to the point of emaciation. There was a protrusion almost the size of
his fist on her neck. Lucas palpated the tumor. It was cold and hard as
rock. He used both hands to finger the throat on either side of the growth.
The flesh was of a normal temperature and yielded to his touch. Finally
he looked again at the woman's face. This time, despite the disfigurement
of illness, he recognized her. "The Widow Kulik. Lives near the fort.
Not the sort usually to be found in this place. How long has she been
here?"

"Couldn't
say." Van der Vries had ignored Lucas's uninvited examination of the patient.
He was preoccupied with pawing through the contents of his satchel. "Don't
know what I did with my cupping tool. I'm sure it was in here..."

Van der
Vries was still pawing through his bag. "The thought had occurred to me,
yes."

Lucas looked
around. Sally was usually at the hospital, but not today. Since the siege
began they'd been living in the one-room barber shop. His sister hated
it. Sally spent all her time trying to get the place as clean as she kept
the cabin. It was a battle she'd never win, but she refused to give in.

The siege
had not, however, made Anna Stuyvesant desert her nursing duties. The
governor's sister was standing at the opposite end of the little ward
watching them. If it had been Sally, Lucas would have summoned her. As
it was, he walked the few steps. "I see the Widow Kulik has been brought
to your care, mevrouw. May I ask why? And how long she has been here?"

"Since yesterday.
Neighbors brought her. There was no one at home to attend her dying. Her
last surviving son was killed two days past."

"Savages?"

"Of course.
What greater plague do we know in this place?"

Lucas nodded.
"I seem to recall there were children."

"Three.
Babies still. The Widow Kulik was caring for them since their mother died
last year in childbirth. The good folk who lived nearby have taken the
children. They could not be expected to take the dying grandmother as
well."

"So now
she's Van der Vries's patient," Lucas said quietly. "And he means to bleed
and blister her. Is that his usual way, mevrouw?"

"How could
I know? He's been here less than a fortnight."

"Long enough
for one with your astuteness to make a judgment." Anna Stuyvesant didn't
meet his eyes.

"He's a
practicing physician, barber. He learned his art with men who served the
most fashionable society. It is fitting that he be put in charge of the
hospital."

And earn
the twenty-guilder-a-year stipend that went with the appointment. "You've
seen the lump on Widow Kulik's neck?"

"It would
be difficult not to see it."

"Indeed."
Lucas's voice was soft but insistent. "The entire medical world recognizes
such goiters, mevrouw. They must be surgically removed. Raising a blister
with the cup is sure to do nothing but add to the patient's misery. As
for bleeding, in these cases it is of no value whatever."

"And if
the Widow Kulik had come to you, you'd have cut away this goiter?"

"Yes. I
could not guarantee -- Sweet bloody Jesus!" Lucas turned and dashed back
to the woman in the bed. Jacob Van der Vries had given up on finding his
cupping tool. Instead he had removed the cork stopper from the wide-mouthed
glass jar and upended it above the woman's head. "Are you insane! You
can't apply leeches in that fashion. For the love of God, you'll kill
her!"

"That's
a strange philosophy for a barber, isn't it? Thought bleeding was your
answer to everything." Van der Vries watched the leeches tumble from the
jar. A number fell on the bedding, but many more landed on the woman's
face. And at least six attached themselves to her neck. "Good," the Dutchman
whispered. "Excellent. Do your work, little friends. Suck the poison out
of the swelling."

Lucas was
nearly sputtering with rage. When he spoke his voice trembled. "The swelling,
as you call it, is a tumor. Not a boil that will profit from bleeding
or lancing."

Van der
Vries chuckled. "Jealous, are you, Englishman? These creatures, after
all, ask no fee for their services. Only to fill themselves with the evil
blood that is causing this poor woman such distress."

Lucas swallowed
a protest. It was too late. Nearly every leech was now well attached.
The woman's face and neck had become a black mass, a writhing thing that
grew ever larger as the jointed, hairy bodies of the worms became engorged
with her blood. "You are a fool," Lucas whispered. "Worse, you're a criminal
and a murderer. Four leeches at a time. Perhaps five. And applied to the
inside of the arm, not -- "

"I seem
to have forgotten my cupping tool. Careless of me, I admit." Van der Vries
was studying the fingernails of his left hand. "But hardly cause for consternation,
given how far advanced this woman's illness is. And it would do little
good to take blood from her arm when any fool, even a barber who believes
himself to be a surgeon, can see that the evil humors have lodged themselves
in the poor creature's throat."

Lucas drew
a long breath. The enormity of the error was stupefying. He all but choked
on it.

Anna Stuyvesant
had stayed out of their argument. Now she took a few steps toward them.
Lucas took a step to his right so she could get a good look at the black
and writhing thing on the bed. She gasped. "So many, Mijnheer Van der
Vries." None of her famous bossiness. She sounded as if she were pleading.
"I have never...Perhaps, barber, you and the physician can possibly remove
a few of the -- "

"No. We
cannot." Lucas watched one last sluggish worm make its way across the
bedclothes and crawl over the bodies of its relatives until it found a
bit of exposed skin behind the woman's ear. He could have prevented that
one from attaching itself, but there was no point. "Leeches have to be
allowed to fill themselves until they drop off, mevrouw. Otherwise they
leave their sucking tool inside the patient and the wound becomes poisonous."
He looked at Van der Vries. "Is that not correct, mijnheer?"

"Yes, of
course." Van der Vries was leaning over his patient, staring at the worms.
"But see, at least six are fixed on the goiter. It will be drained of
the evil blood that -- "

"Tell me,
Van der Vries, when you were healing the sick with the fashionable practitioner
of physic in fashionable Cambridge, England, did you not hear of the English
king's extremely fashionable personal physician, William Harvey?"

"I'm pleased
to hear it. Because over thirty years ago Harvey proved that the blood
circulates in the human body. The Widow Kulik's goiter is a growth, a
struma made of tissue and fed by blood from the whole body. It is not
depend -- "

"At last
we have reached the nub of the argument." The Dutchman looked directly
at Lucas. "You wished to cut, did you not, barber?"

"I could
have removed the goiter, yes. There is no guarantee of success, but --
"

"But definitely
a guarantee of excruciating pain. Look at the size of this swelling. As
big as two pullet eggs. Do you not agree it must have been growing on
the woman's neck long before my arrival in the colony?"

"Of course."

"Indeed.
And despite the fact that you were here and I was not, this poor creature
never consulted you."

"Some are
afraid of the knife. You know it as well as -- "

Anna Stuyvesant
put herself between the two men. "Look, the leeches...They are starting
to fall off."

"Ah, yes."
Van der Vries bent over the bed and began scooping the fat black worms
into his jar. "Thank you for recalling me to my duty, mevrouw. These beauties
will serve some other patient as well. Be ready for a new meal soon, won't
you, my little friends?"

The face
of the Widow Kulik began to emerge from the curtain of leeches. Her skin
was ghostly white, her eyes open and staring, her mouth relaxed. Lucas
put his hand on the woman's chest. "She's dead."

"Ja,
ja. I thought so already." Van der Vries was intent on gathering up
the leeches. It was not difficult; they weren't only stiff with blood,
they were stupefied with it. They tumbled happily into the glass jar and
made no effort to attach themselves to the Dutchman's pudgy hands. "Her
case, as you just admitted, was well advanced. Nonetheless, it is the
duty of the true physician to try all possible remedies until the very
end."

IV

Having known
her naked in the woods, Lucas found it difficult to once again have Marit
only in the storeroom of the butcher shop.

Still, any
way was better than no way. Over a year now, and their lust hadn't cooled.
Marit still moaned and gasped in delight when he entered her, and trembled
like a leaf in a tempest when finally she was overcome by ecstasy. Seeing
her that way had always made Lucas feel like a god. It still did. But
it was not the same.

Sometimes
when he thought about the things they had done to each other in the cave
-- a mere twenty minutes' walk from Wall Street -- he blushed. Both of
them naked as Adam and Eve, surrounded by nothing but the forest, bathing
naked in the cool fresh water of the Collect Pond.

Lucas desperately
missed the freedom of those precious hours. So did Marit. While he was
deep inside her in the storeroom, she would whisper her memories in his
ear. "Ah, yes, do that, Lucas. Put your fingers inside me there and rock
them back and forth. When we went to the cave you used to put your cock
inside that place. Do you remember, my darling Lucas, putting your cock
in my arse? Do you remember?"

When she
said those things he went wild. Who would imagine a woman would speak
such words? Not a whore -- a respectable woman who had a husband and went
to church on Sundays, and sometimes caught his eye when she came out of
the service, and just from the way she looked at him made him know what
she was thinking. What she would say aloud as soon as they were together
in their secret cave. I want to suck your cock, Lucas. I want to take
it in my mouth and suck it dry.

No more.
They dared not risk it. Aside from the threat posed by Ankel Jannssen
asleep upstairs, there were the customers, more of them than ever before.

Normally
Nieuw Netherland was a place of incredible plenty, much of it free for
the taking. Now, with overland access to the farms and the surrounding
countryside cut off, all the town's provisions had to arrive by ship.
Stuyvesant inaugurated a rationing system. It should have meant less business
in Jannssen's shop.

But the
atmosphere of danger bred rumors faster than maggots on a dung heap. A
story made the rounds that Ankel and Marit had a secret supply of meat
hidden in the cellar beneath their house. That it would have long since
become putrid didn't stop people from coming and asking to buy some of
the hoard. They seemed to think if they could just catch the mistress
butcher on her own and offer her a bit of extra money, she'd find them
something over their ration.

Marit turned
them all away. "Even if I had extra meat, which I do not, I wouldn't dare
sell you more than your share. The fine for cheating on the rationing
is a fortune, three guilders."

The first
time Lucas heard her say it he was hiding in the storeroom, his still-unsatisfied
cock stiff as a broom handle inside his breeches. When he thought about
the penalty for what they were doing -- far worse than a three-guilder
fine -- he marveled at their foolhardiness. But he didn't leave. And he
didn't stop visiting the butcher shop at every possible opportunity. Neither
did the customers who continued to believe the rumor because they wanted
it to be true.

It was rare
that Lucas and Marit could be together the way they were that January
Thursday, over a month into the siege. For once they hadn't been interrupted,
and when he was done Lucas could chance staying inside her for a few seconds.
He smoothed Marit's golden hair back from her forehead. He kissed her
cheeks and her lips and her eyes.

"I miss
the woods," she whispered between his kisses. "I long to be naked with
you."

"Me, too.
But I don't long to lose my scalp, or see you lose yours."

He eased
out of her. Marit sighed. "Each time you part from me it's like a little
death."

"I know.
I feel the same."

"Do you,
Lucas?"

"Dear God,
Marit, of course I do. How can you ask?"

"Because
if you are as unhappy apart from me as I am from you, then we must do
something about it."

Lucas adjusted
himself and buttoned his breeches. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.
"Dearest Marit, there is nothing to be done."

"We could
go away, Lucas."

He pulled
back, stared at her. "What are you saying?"

"We could
go to New England. To Boston."

Lucas chuckled.
"Wouldn't we have a fine time with the Puritans in Boston! A nonbelieving
barber and a runaway wife. They'd hang us ten minutes after we arrived."

"Ah yes."
Marit began lacing her bodice, easing her heavy breasts back into their
restraint. "The saintly Juffrouw Sally who goes so frequently to the hospital
to care for the stinking vagabonds brought there to die. Your sister is
how old, Lucas?"

"Twenty-five,"
he admitted. "Nearly twenty-six."

"Yes. And
she's a dried-up old prune. It is long past time you found her a husband."

"We can't
afford a dowry. And I promised Sally I wouldn't -- "

The footsteps
of the butcher were heavy on the stairs. "Marit! Damn you, woman, where
are you? Marit!"

Heart pounding,
Lucas ran from the storeroom to the front of the shop and positioned himself
in front of the wooden counter.

Marit was
right behind him, adjusting her skirt and smoothing her hair as she took
her place on the other side of the chopping block. "Ja, I am here, Ankel.
I am talking to a customer." Her red mouth sent Lucas a silent kiss.

Ankel Jannssen
shoved aside the burlap curtain and peered into the shop. He was a big
man, as tall as Lucas and twice as broad. A lifetime of meat-eating had
packed flesh onto his frame. He filled the doorway. "Listen, woman, I
want -- Who's this?"

"The barber,
Ankel. Lucas Turner."

"Ja,
Turner. The English. So what are you doing here, barber?"

Lucas thought
his mouth too dry for speech, but the words came. "Your good wife provides
me with sheep's intestines and pig bladders for my trade, butcher. I was
hoping she had some put by for me today."

"Not today.
We have nothing like that now. Everything but the smell, they eat. Pretty
soon even the sawdust from the floor."

Jannssen
stepped up to the chopping block, leaned on it, and looked hard at Lucas.
The stench of stale drink came off the man in waves. It almost overcame
the reek of his unwashed body. He had small close-set eyes, pig eyes.
"Ja, Turner the English." He sounded as if he'd been thinking a
lot about it. "Don't come any more here, barber. Go somewhere else for
your guts and bladders. There are butchers closer to your place. Plague
them. Even though their wives don't have tits quite so big."

Marit flushed
dark red and turned away from her husband. Lucas looked directly at him.
"It will be exactly as you say, Mijnheer Jannssen. Good day to you. And
to you, mevrouw."

Lucas turned
and walked out of the shop. He heard the unmistakable soft thwack of a
fist striking flesh before he'd closed the door. And Marit's voice. "No,
Ankel. No. I told you...you are imagining -- " A second blow cut off her
words.

Lucas froze
in the doorway. There were at least a dozen other people on the short
street. More than enough to rush to the butcher's aid if they heard him
being beaten to pulp by the much younger and stronger barber, Lucas Turner.
Plenty of respectable witnesses to testify that Ankel Jannssen had been
exercising his legal right to discipline his wife when the Englishman,
for no good reason, turned on him.

God alone
knew what suspicions Ankel Jannssen would testify to in a court of law,
but Lucas didn't need any messages from God to tell him what would happen
to Marit if she were branded an adulteress and divorced.

He turned
and walked the length of Hall Place, past the tidy wooden houses with
their calico curtains and their small pots of flowers standing either
side of every front door. Until he cleared the large open space in front
of the fort he was sure he could hear the sound of Jannssen's fists pounding
Marit's soft, yielding flesh.

*

Lucas didn't
go to the butcher shop on Friday or Saturday. On Sunday he considered
attending church, but decided against it. Unlike New England, Nieuw Netherland
imposed no penalty for nonobservance. The wrath of Stuyvesant and the
burgomasters was reserved for those who attempted any form of public worship
other than that prescribed by the Dutch Reformed Church. Even the Jews
were known to conduct their rites in a room above the mill on Beaver Street.
As long as they made no public show about how they prayed or to whom --
and as long as no Christian children were reported missing -- they were
left alone.

For his
part, Lucas had no particular beliefs. God knows he was no Jew, but one
sort of Christian or another seemed to him to make little difference.
He'd felt safe from God's wrath and Stuyvesant's when -- only to get a
look at Marit -- he'd gone a few times to the Sabbath liturgy at the Church
of St. Nicholas. But the Sunday after Ankel surprised them, he contrived
to arrive when the service was almost over.

The church
was within the walls of the fort. A brutal wind whistled cold and icy
across the parade ground, carrying the promise of snow. Lucas sheltered
in the doorway of a storehouse a few steps from the church. He heard the
last notes of the closing hymn, the drone of the minister's final blessing.
A few moments later the worshipers began to leave the building. Everyone
moved swiftly, anxious to get home to their fires. Marit and Ankel always
occupied a pew toward the rear. They were among the first to appear.

Lucas huddled
in the shadows. The butcher and his wife got closer. Ankel was talking
to the man on his right. Marit was on her husband's left, the side closer
to Lucas. She walked with her head down, one hand clutching the hood of
her gray duffel cloak tight beneath her chin. When she drew level with
Lucas, she turned her face in his direction.

Lucas gasped.
Her eyes were swollen nearly shut. There was a cut on her right cheek,
and her left was black and blue. And Jannssen had added shame to Marit's
punishment by making her go to church so everyone would know she had done
something to displease him, and he'd given her the discipline she deserved.

Lucas had
to make a conscious effort to keep from lunging forward and throwing the
butcher to the ground.

Marit turned
her head so she could continue to see him as she and her husband walked
on. Finally she turned away.

Lucas stayed
where he was, trembling with rage. When he finally dared move, the church
was empty, the last of the congregation had left the fort. He was alone.

The threatened
snow began before he was halfway home. When he opened the door of the
barber shop and smelled the dinner Sally was cooking, he gagged. For a
time he stood where he was, the wind raging behind his back, blowing snow
into the barber shop.

"Lucas!"
Sally turned from the fireplace. "For heaven's sake, have you lost your
senses? Shut the door before all the fire's warmth escapes."

He did as
she asked, but he felt no difference in the temperature. His fury was
an inferno. Having nothing else to feed on, it consumed Lucas himself.

Rich with
unforgettable characters and history, intricately plotted and utterly
absorbing, City of Dreams is a stirring saga of early Manhattan
and the beginnings of medical science told by a master storyteller.

In 1661,
Lucas Turner and his sister, Sally, stagger off a small wooden ship after
eleven weeks at sea to make a fresh start in the rough and rowdy Dutch
settlement of Nieuw Amsterdam.

Lucas, a
barber surgeon, and Sally, an apothecary, are both gifted healers and
bound to each other by blood and necessity. Yet as their new lives unfold,
lust, betrayal, and murder will make them deadly enemies. In their struggle
to survive in the New World, both make choices that will burden their
descendants -- dedicated physicians and surgeons, pirates and whoremasters
-- with a legacy of secrets and retribution. That heritage sets cousin
against cousin, physician against surgeon, and ultimately, patriot against
Tory.

In a city
where slaves are burned alive on Wall Street, where James Madison, Thomas
Jefferson, and John Adams walk The Broad Way arguing America's destiny,
and where one of the greatest hospitals in the world is born in former
shipwrights' workshops by the East River, the fortunes of the two families
are inextricably entwined. Their pride and ambition, their loves and hates,
and their willingness to live by their own rules will shape the future
of medicine, and the becoming of the dream that is New York.